Simon is an electronic game that tests memory skills by displaying a pattern of lights and tones that the player tries to recreate. If the player is successful, the game adds another entry to the pattern to become progressively harder in each round.

The game was created by Ralph H. Baer and Howard J. Morrison while they were working for Marvin Glass and Associates. Baer and Morrison were attending a trade show in 1976 when they learned about Atari’s arcade game, Touch Me. Baer built a prototype using a Texas Instruments microcontroller chip with tones that sounded like a bugle, and his partner Lenny Cope programmed the game. They created an 8” x 8” console, originally calling it Follow Me.

The game was approved, renamed Simon, and debuted in 1978 as a top selling toy. Milton Bradley built on the success by introducing a smaller version called Pocket Simon and a more complex, eight-button version called Super Simon.

In the ‘90s, Hasbro (who had acquired Milton Bradley) converted the Super Simon into a hexagonal unit with six buttons. This was followed by Simon Squared, a game with four buttons on one side and eight smaller ones on the other side. Four years later, Hasbro made a radically different version when they introduced Simon Stix, composed of two electronic drumsticks with four levels of play.

Simon has continued to evolve with new incarnations, including tough versions like Simon Surprise in which the lenses (which replaced the buttons) are all the same color. Another challenging version called Simon Rewind requires the player to play the sequence backward.

In 2013, Hasbro created Simon Swipe, a circular unit similar to a steering wheel with eight touchscreen buttons. It has four modes – levels (the main game), classic, party, and extreme – with 16 levels of gameplay.